preview

Cross Pollination and Plant Mutation

Satisfactory Essays

Cross Pollination and Plant Mutation
Many crops throughout history came close to extinction or had mass shortages due to disease, pests, and fungus. With the introduction of genetically modified plants, there was now a way to save harvests and combat these issues, hopefully increasing yield and heightening durability of plants. Over time, these modifications have targeted different parts of plants, from protein structure, to altering genetic coding, to adding new types of genetic codes from different organisms, to now messing with enzymes in plants. Genetically modified plants do often carry desirable traits but the issues with control, cross pollination, and pest and disease adaptation and mutation out weights the little benefits genetically modified plants offer. A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism that has had their genetic material tampered with and modified by people. This means that scientists takes genetic material, usually in the form of genes, from an organism, manipulate it, and then reinstate in via injection into another organism (Pollack 41). Originally scientists noticed bacteria that could inject its DNA into a plant/organism and then cause a tumor-like form for the bacteria to feed off of. They utilized this bacteria’s natural tendencies to place desired qualities into the new organism through manipulating this bacteria (Lyznik 925). Scientists took out the disease and damaging parts of the bacteria, then put in the genetic coding they

Get Access